Effective Leadership
Overview
The Mayor works for the people of St. Petersburg. Not for a party. Not for special interests. Not for one neighborhood at the expense of another. For the people.
That is not just rhetoric to me. It is how I have always governed. On my first day as Governor, I signed an executive order establishing the Office of Open Government because I believed then, and I believe now, that the people I work for deserve to know what their government is doing in their name. They earned that access by paying for it. I treated transparency as a duty, not a courtesy.
St. Petersburg residents do not have that kind of access to their city government right now. They feel like City Hall is closed to them. They cannot get the Mayor on the phone, cannot get questions answered, and cannot see how their tax dollars are being spent. The administration runs on its own schedule and its own priorities, not on the schedule and priorities of the people who pay for it.
I will run a different administration. Open, accessible, accountable, and visible. Here is what that looks like.
A. Meet the Mayor: Access That Is Real, Not Performative
The most consistent complaint I hear from St. Petersburg residents is that they cannot reach their Mayor. Not on big issues. Not on small ones. The door is closed.
That ends on day one.
Weekly Meet the Mayor sessions. I will set aside a four-hour block every week during which any St. Petersburg resident who wants to meet with the Mayor can sign up for a 15-minute meeting with me and my staff. No gatekeeping. No requirement that you know someone. No need for a lobbyist or a donor to make the introduction. You sign up, you come in, you get fifteen minutes to be heard.
Rotating locations across the city. The sessions will rotate between City Hall and accessible community locations across the city, including libraries and recreation centers in every district. A resident in Childs Park should be able to meet with the Mayor in Childs Park. A resident on the Gandy peninsula should not have to drive downtown to be heard. The Mayor should come to where the people are, not the other way around.
Every neighborhood association, every year. I will meet with every neighborhood association in St. Petersburg within my first year in office. Neighborhood associations are the eyes and ears of this city. They know what is happening on their streets, what their neighbors need, and what the city is doing wrong before anyone at City Hall does. The leaders of these associations are doing the work of civil society without pay, and the Mayor’s job is to listen to them and act on what they say.
A Mayor who actually picks up the phone. I have a long reputation for giving constituents my personal cell phone number. My staff has always told me this is impractical. I have always told my staff that the people we serve deserve to be able to reach me. I will run my mayoralty the same way I have run every office I have held.
This is not radical. It is what residents already expect from a Mayor who works for them. I will deliver it.
B. Transparency and Accountability That Residents Can Verify
Access matters. It is not enough.
A government that residents cannot see is a government residents cannot trust. As Mayor, I will commit to transparency standards that go well beyond what current administrations have offered.
Annual public reports on every major function of city government. In Plank 2 of this platform, I committed to publishing annual reports on the city’s storm preparedness and after-action reports following every major emergency. That commitment is the model. The same standard should apply across the rest of city government: housing, transportation, public safety, parks and recreation, economic development, infrastructure, and procurement. Every year, residents should be able to see what the city committed to do, what got done, what did not, and why.
Performance metrics that residents can actually access. It is not enough to publish reports. Residents need to be able to find them, understand them, and use them. As Mayor, I will work with city departments to develop a public dashboard of performance metrics across major city services, presented in plain language and updated regularly. Permitting timelines. Code enforcement response times. Service request resolution rates. The kind of operational data residents need to hold their government accountable.
Neighborhood-level capital spending reports. Residents in West and South St. Pete cannot tell whether the city is investing in their neighborhoods at the rate it should. As I committed in Plank 3, my administration will publish neighborhood-level reports on city capital spending. Every St. Pete resident will be able to see exactly how their tax dollars are being deployed across the city.
Open government as a default. Public records requests should be answered quickly. City Council meeting materials should be posted in advance, in formats residents can actually use. Major contracts and budget decisions should be explained in plain language. The default posture of city government should be: tell residents what is happening, before they have to ask.
C. A City Hall Culture That Serves Residents
The people who work for the City of St. Petersburg are not just employees. They are public servants doing difficult work, often under difficult conditions, on behalf of the residents who pay their salaries. The Mayor’s job is to set the conditions under which those public servants can do their best work.
Right now, those conditions are not what they should be. Talented people have left. Some have left under troubling circumstances. The administration has dealt with serious workplace concerns reactively rather than proactively. None of this serves residents well, because a city government that cannot retain talent or maintain professional standards cannot deliver the services residents pay for.
As Mayor, I will run an administration where:
Hiring is based on qualifications. Every appointment to a senior position will go through a rigorous, transparent process. The most qualified candidate will get the job. Period. No quiet workarounds. Residents deserve to know that the people running their city government earned their positions.
Workplace standards are enforced consistently and from the top down. Every city employee will know what the standards are, will know how to report concerns when standards are not being met, and will know that concerns are investigated promptly and seriously. Leaders who fail to meet those standards will be held to account, regardless of their personal relationship to the Mayor.
The Mayor is responsible. If something is going wrong inside City Hall, I want to know about it. Residents shouldn’t have to read about problems in my administration in the morning paper before I do. I will not delegate accountability for the culture of my office. I will not pretend that a problem does not exist when it plainly does.
Employees feel safe doing their jobs. A city government where good people are afraid to speak up, afraid to push back, afraid to report concerns, is a city government that fails its residents. The work of running this city is too important to be done in fear.
These commitments are not about politics. They are about the basic professional standards that residents have a right to expect from any government they pay for.
D. Communication That Reaches Residents Where They Are
Government communication is not optional. It is the bedrock of everything else.
If residents do not know what the city is doing, they cannot benefit from it, cannot push back on it, and cannot help shape it. The city’s communication infrastructure right now is failing residents on multiple fronts.
In Plank 2 of this platform, I committed to a citywide text alert system, information kiosks in high-traffic neighborhoods, and door-to-door outreach during emergencies. Those commitments are the floor. The same standard should apply during normal operations.
Residents should know what their city offers. St. Pete has one of the best parks and recreation systems in the nation. Award-winning programs. Strong infrastructure. Real assets that residents pay for. And yet many residents do not know what is available, when, or how to participate. As Mayor, I will direct city departments to proactively communicate with residents about the services and amenities their tax dollars support.
Multiple channels, not just social media. The current administration has relied too heavily on social media for resident communication. Social media is one tool. It is not a substitute for the kinds of direct communication that residents without internet access, without smartphones, or without time to follow government accounts on social platforms rely on. Mailings, signage, community outreach, and direct phone communication all have a place in a serious city communication strategy.
Plain language. City government documents should be readable by the residents they serve. As Mayor, I will direct that major communications, including budget documents, public notices, and policy announcements, be drafted in plain language that residents can actually understand.
My Record
Open government and direct accountability are not new commitments for me.
As Florida’s Attorney General, I launched MyFloridaRX.com, the first tool of its kind that let Floridians compare prescription drug prices across pharmacies in real time. Transparency was the point. Information in residents’ hands changed the dynamic between consumers and the pharmaceutical industry.
On my first day as Governor, I signed Executive Order 07-01 establishing the Office of Open Government. The order made government transparency a direct priority of the Executive Office, not a delegated responsibility. I treated the people of Florida the way I will treat the people of St. Petersburg: as the bosses I work for, not as audiences to be managed.
As Governor, I built a reputation as the “People’s Governor” because I refused to let party politics or special interests override the interests of the people I served. I worked across party lines. I bucked party leadership when the people’s interests required it. I treated every Floridian as a constituent, regardless of how they voted. I will run my mayoralty the same way.
I have always believed that the people I serve deserve a leader who treats them like the bosses they are. Not as numbers in a poll. Not as audiences for a press release. Not as voters to be reached at the next election. As the people who paid for this government and who deserve to see it work for them.
That is the Mayor I will be.